by Tom Murphy
Brooks Chaffee, impossibly handsome, stood in her doorway.
Lily had forgotten his voice, or maybe his voice had deepened and grown weary these ten years past.
“Mrs. Malone? My name is Brooks Chaffee, and I apologize for intruding. Stanford Dickinson suggested that you might be able to give me some advice.”
How did he come here? What cruel fate is mocking me? How does he know Stanford? What might Stanford have told him about me? For a moment Lily trembled, literally felt a quiver of emotion flowing from head to toe.
Then she stepped forward, smiling, and gave him her hand, sure as she had ever been sure of anything that the touch of him would probably kill her on the spot.
“Welcome, Mr. Chaffee. If we can help you, we’ll be glad to. Won’t you come in and have tea or a glass of wine? I fear you’ve caught me in the middle of some chores, I must look a fright.”
The first obstacle is passed, Lily thought, chattering gaily over her fears; his hand has five fingers, just like anyone else’s hand. And God did not strike me dead for touching it. But it is not just any hand, it’s his hand, the hand of fate come to destroy my little world, just as I was getting so comfortable in it, just as the first bit of happiness I’ve ever known was taking root. And for an instant Lily wished the unwishable, that he had never come to shine the merciless light of reality onto the unfledged wings of her girlhood dream.
She led him into the library, trying to see the room through his eyes, thanking the old Velasquez who had first built the place for making it so grand, hoping he wouldn’t think her a ninny for chattering nervously, hoping, please God, to survive the next hour without fainting or spilling something or making an irreparable ass of herself.
Lily asked him to sit down, then fled to the kitchen to order tea. Then she raced upstairs and changed into a more presentable dress, tore off the peasant’s kerchief, and gave her flaming hair five fast strokes of the silver brush, splashed her face with water, and took a quick look at the result in the mirror. Well, she thought, grinning wryly at the freckled urchin in the glass, if he takes me for one of the servants, he won’t be far from wrong.
Then she walked briskly out the door and down the stairs to her guest. As though I’m just like other women, as though I’m a decent farmwoman with nothing to hide, the sort of woman a young man could talk to without harming his reputation, the sort of woman a man could touch without wondering what armies of others have been there before him…Lily stopped herself by raw willpower from continuing down this bleak line of reasoning, for she knew that if she didn’t stop quickly she might never have the courage to face the poor man again.
I am what I am, and he must know that, if he knows Stanny D. And still he came here! Well, it could be that what Fergy says is true, that I’m still a bit of a tourist attraction, even in absentia. Maybe I should light up a cigar and tell him a bawdy tale or two and put an end to it here and now.
Her hand trembled on the big iron door handle.
When Lily returned to the library Brooks was on his feet, examining the books.
“I’m afraid they’re mostly farming journals and horticultural books, Mr. Chaffee, we are very rustic out here.” He’ll think I’m a moron, a bumpkin, and he’ll be right.
He turned at the sound of her voice, smiling. He’s changed, Lily thought, or it’s me, my foolish dreams, painting him prettier than he is. Oh, very handsome, muy hermoso, to be sure. But without quite the glow she remembered so vividly. Even his smile had a cutting edge to it. He’s been damaged somehow, that’s it, wounded in some way. And haven’t we all? He walked toward her and she noticed the slight limp. Of course, the war. I’ll bet anything he was injured in some battle. Lucky it is he’s alive.
“But that’s why I’m here. Stanford Dickinson was telling me only yesterday that Malone Produce is the only really modern farming operation in the West, and I’ve been thinking I might want to get into farming myself, if you wouldn’t mind competition.”
“Oh, far from it, Mr. Chaffee. There’s no keeping up with the demand. California has room for a hundred Malone Produce companies. We were only the first, we never thought of being a monopoly. My manager and I will be glad to help you, in any way we can.”
Gloria herself arrived with the tea, and in the best silver pot, on a silver tray, with tiny sweet cakes on a flowered dish. Brooks Chaffee, thought his hostess, will never know what a tribute he is getting from Mrs. Sanchez.
They talked for an hour; then Lily took him on a brief tour of the ranch buildings and introduced him to the Bakers. Brooks talked easily with the Bakers, asked shrewd questions, showed himself to be a keen observer, noticing things that only a bright and genuinely interested student of agriculture could be expected to see. Lily thought of her own first months on the ranch, when the great farming enterprise was really only a gleam in her eye, asking and learning and relying on Fred Baker.
Oh, and of course he’s a smart one, bright as he is beautiful, she thought, and married, too, for didn’t I read that in the papers? And maybe he will settle out here and truly do farming, and try for a bit of a fling with the notorious Lily Cigar, and then bring out his fine wife with her dark eyes and fancy airs, who’d die rather than ever speak to the likes of me. And she thought of that day, so long ago, when she had seen Brooks and Caroline in Wallingford’s store.
Lily suppressed a sigh and told her eager guest about the various sizes of harrows that were being made in St. Louis, and why two small ones were better suited to these hilly fields than one of the larger sizes.
Suddenly, in what seemed like minutes, the afternoon was nearly gone, and the inevitable late-day coolness was settling on the ranch.
“We’d be pleased, Mr. Chaffee, if you could join us for supper.”
“Oh,” he said, smiling, “thank you, but I must get back to town. Perhaps another time. You have been terribly kind as it is, Mrs. Malone.”
Of course, she thought, and the thought stung her heart, dine with a whore? Not likely, not for a man like Brooks Chaffee.
“It has been a pleasure,” she said softly. “Mr. Dickinson is an old friend, and anything I can do to oblige him will soon be done.”
“I have some business that must be done in town tomorrow,” he said slowly, considering, “but on Thursday I am free, and perhaps I can persuade you to give me a more extensive tour of the farm.”
Lily looked at him and as quickly looked away, not daring to believe her luck. He must not know about me, then, Stanford must not have told him, for surely had he known, he would never have come this far. But whatever strange magic had created her luck, Lily knew enough not to fight it. She smiled with both surprise and pleasure, and once again extended her hand.
“Consider it an appointment. We can take a picnic, and a day will be sufficient to show you nearly all of it.
“Good-bye, Mr. Chaffee.”
“Good-bye, and thank you. Until Thursday.”
His horse was big and black and he rode superbly. As he cantered away from the big house, Lily wondered about the limp, about Mrs. Brooks Chaffee, about what Stanford might have told him, or what he might learn on his own. Did they still sell those ridiculous photographs of her in the souvenir stores? Could he have run into Fergy and—God forbid—gotten his first impressions of the Malones from him? In the pit of Lily’s stomach a thousand butterflies were playing at war games. In her throat, coils that felt like steel were tying themselves into knots that might never be undone. So here he is, this man you’ve dreamed of half your life, the sea has tossed him up on your doorstep, and what good does it do, but twist the knife a little deeper, a bit more painfully, in your heart? For what could you ever be to him, or he to you? Still, he had come once, he was coming back. The future would bring what it would bring. Lily watched the dust settling, sifting down slowly through the yellow light of late afternoon, long after his horse had vanished from her sight, and she thought of all the men who had left her, and added Brooks Chaffee to that long, sad list.
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Brooks could barely hold the horse to a canter as he rode down her long carriage drive. It would be rude to start the gallop so soon, it would make him seem too eager to flee.
Yet that was his first and only impulse, on seeing her, to flee!
He had been in San Francisco more than a month now, and found it both familiar and strange, a loud striving urchin of a town, barefoot and bejeweled, a place of extremes, a place that lived for the instant, where tomorrow had far more reality than yesterday. The San Franciscans were always assuring him what a coming place it was, and how cosmopolitan. They said these things a bit too insistently, protesting too much, as though they found a kind of reassurance in the telling.
That there was a real excitement here could not be denied. The city throbbed with it. The air crackled with anticipation of…it hardly mattered what. The next invention, the newest scandal, the latest gold or silver or copper strike in the farthest hills—all of these things were enough to set the city rippling and quivering with pleasure. All of San Francisco’s nostalgia was for tomorrow, and the days ahead of that.
This suited Brooks Chaffee down to his elegantly shod toes.
His letters of introduction led him instantly to the highest circles of San Francisco banking, which led to Stanford Dickinson, and Stanford had told him about Lily and her ranch. In his hearty, convivial style, but without mentioning his own connection to Lily, Dickinson had outlined her spectacular career and her even more spectacular gesture of leaving it all behind, trading the silks and champagne for calico and a farmer’s endless contest with nature.
Brooks looked at the beautiful landscape of San Rafael as he rode down to Tiburon bay. She had come from trouble, then, and found peace in these gentle hills, in this tonic air. Here under the immensity of the California sky, one determined woman had carved out a new life for herself, built a private kingdom where she made the rules and lived her life as she pleased.
The rhythm of his horse was soothing. Brooks felt the peace of the countryside soaking into him like some magical healing balm. Sure, the glitter and bustle of San Francisco had appeal. The raw heedless energy of the place spoke to him, the headlong rush into the future, moving so fast that there seemed to be no time to ponder the niceties of manners, or breeding, or the honor of one’s wife. A man could lose himself in San Francisco’s boom just as easily as in the darkest jungle of Africa. But here, across the bay, Brooks sensed another, greater freedom. Lily had found it first, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t come seeking, too. God knows there’s land enough!
Brooks urged his horse on faster, and he smiled a slow and thoughtful smile. He could feel the impact of her even now, galloping away from her ranch as if pursued by wolves.
He had stood in the great doorway of the big house, the sun warming his back, mumbling something to a maid who might or might not understand. The maid disappeared, and soon a slim girl in a faded blue dress appeared, her incredibly red-gold hair carelessly tucked behind a kerchief, green eyes blazing, not a trace of powder or pretension to her.
Dammit, dammit, dammit! And why did she have to be so damnably beautiful?
There was a strange expression on her face for a moment, as though she were trying to place him, asking herself some secret question. Then she found herself, and smiled, and held out her hand.
And the shock went through him quick and clean, like a sword.
He hadn’t wanted to feel that much electricity in a woman’s touch, not for a long time to come. Brooks bore down hard on his game leg, using the pain of it as a drug, overstating the limp, for who would love a cripple? She left him then, only to come back, all too soon and all too beautiful, changed now, the hair hanging free, in a most becoming dress, more in control of herself. It’s an act, a performance; after all, isn’t she a professional, the most famous whore there ever was in California? This insistence had almost no impact at all, for Brooks knew too well, and had it burned ir-removably into his heart, that no one could behave more like a whore than Mrs. Brooks Chaffee of West Eleventh Street in New York.
Her face was grave for all its beauty, and her manner businesslike. He saw how she talked to the fellow Baker, her partner, and the workmen on the ranch.
And she asked him for supper. He made up some excuse, feeling a fool, feeling like a schoolboy caught truant, praying he hadn’t offended her.
He said he’d come back. Tread gently, Chaffee, treat her like an enemy, be very wary, for she’ll knife you in the heart quick as lightning, and twice in the same year in the same place might be fatal.
It was ridiculous. He was a grown man, after all, a veteran of the great war, a New York banker, a Chaffee too, if it came to that, and here he was quivering like some rabbit confronted by a snake.
She looked like anything but a snake. The snakes were all inside him, and well he knew it, coiled around his memory, strangling his heart. He made the horse go faster.
What glorious hills, what richness seemed to lie everywhere. And how very peaceful it all was, and how green. Even the vastness of the sea was far enough removed to seem merely decorative instead of the cataclysmic force it could be.
And so Brooks Chaffee galloped down to Tiburon, fighting with emotions that raced ahead of him no matter how he struggled, raced back to West Eleventh Street, and ahead, to Thursday, to the time he’d see her again.
As much as she tried to plan the day, rehearse what she’d say, what they’d eat and where they’d eat it, Lily found herself in a rare state of girlish indecision. What a little fool you are, Lily, getting so worked up, and for what? But however she might chide herself, and whatever logic told her about the situation, Lily felt as young and as vulnerable as that small orphaned girl of long ago, trembling at the edge of her mother’s grave, fighting against a terrible urge to run away.
What would she wear? What would she say? What did it matter?
Thursday came creeping at her like a bandit in the underbrush, menacing, silent, slow-moving now, but poised to lunge.
The day dawned clear after a sleepless night.
How very foolish. How entirely silly. How deadly frightening.
Lily sighed the sigh of a condemned prisoner and dragged herself out of bed, washed and dressed, and went down to have her morning tea. She would show herself and her ranch simply, without any special fuss. Let him see the worst, then, and make what he would of it. There had been temptations, many and strong they were, too, that led her mind in other directions: put on a show, wear your finest, give him champagne. The good Lord knew she could afford that. But Lily didn’t want to remind the man of her wealth or how she’d earned it. That part of her life was over, and for good, buried in her own mind, if not in others’.
So when Lily dressed that August morning she put on her familiar black riding dress with its skirt split and sewn into flowing pantaloons, a simple white cotton blouse, high-necked, that tied at the throat in a kind of scarf. Over this went her black riding jacket, the black vaquero’s flat-brimmed hat, and her flame of hair tied back like a pony’s tail to keep it from flying in the wind.
If Brooks Chaffee wanted fashion, he would have to look elsewhere.
Their picnic would be simple too, but of the ranch’s best produce. Cider, they’d have, from Fred’s orchard, and cold roast chicken from their own hatchery. Bread from Malone wheat with sweet fresh butter from Malone cows. And berries and Mrs. Sanchez’ spicy pickled vegetables as a refreshing salad. Already, from yesterday afternoon, the cider was chilling in a brook near her favorite hilltop place. But this would be no lonesome, romantic idyll, no indeed! Fred and Mary Baker would be joining them for lunch, even if it did mean taking Fred away from the harvest, where he usually had a sandwich on horseback while supervising the hundred-some workers.
Lily paced the big kitchen, checking the picnic basket and checking it again. Suppose he didn’t come? She looked at the clock. A quarter to ten. Ten, he’d said. His ferryboat sank. That’s it. He’s dead. He died cursing the name of Lily Cigar. Lily
felt Mrs. Sanchez’s eyes on her, and she grinned. Gloria Sanchez no doubt sensed how her mistress felt, now, facing the prospect of a whole day with the hombre muy hermoso. Lily smiled at her own foolishness, poured herself some more tea, and sat down.
Precisely at ten o’clock his knock came echoing through the empty halls. Lily’s heart froze. It is just another day, Lily, you goose, just one more out of thousands, the sun came up like it always has done, and it will go down just as surely, and your poor little life doesn’t depend on Brooks Chaffee’s smile, nor on the love of any man, and don’t you forget it. What in the devil have you been slaving for all these years, if not to get away from having to depend on any man, on anything at all but your own sweat and willpower and brains?
Trembling still, Lily went to the door.
Brooks found he could hardly eat the delicious Lick House breakfast he’d ordered before dawn. He drank two cups of sugared coffee, nibbled at a brioche, slipped on the supple Mexican riding boots he’d bought just last week, and decided to walk the six blocks to the Commercial Wharf at the foot of Sacramento Street.
He loved San Francisco in the still soft mornings, dense with fog. It was a change, and a welcome one, to see the city resting, to hear it quiet. Just before he left the drawing room of his suite at the hotel, he glanced once again at the thick envelope that had arrived from New York the day before. It held a threat and a promise. His divorce was now final, so the papers had brought him the promise of freedom at the same time they had also brought him the threat of despair, the natural unwillingness of the child who has played with fire and been burned to venture near the warm, enticing flames again. Why, why hadn’t he sent Lily Malone a note, called the thing off, waited until he had more control over his runaway heart?
It’s just because she’s lovely, and you haven’t had a woman since Caroline. He walked faster, boot heels pounding angrily on the pavement of Sacramento Street. And what a fool you were, in the army, being true to Caroline! Not, come to think on it, that there had been many chances to be untrue. Then, Antietam, and the hospital, and his nerves scrambled like eggs, and the coming back to West Eleventh Street. Where he’d been so miserable, he could barely leave the house, let alone chase a woman.